Learning Journal

This section will contain journal entries created on required aspects of the Provincial Instructor's Diploma program, whereas any posts made to the home page will be from a more personal perspective.

Quotation Reflection Exercise:

The quotation I chose to reflect on is the following: 

"[w]e may be witnessing the emergence of what has been called the learning society"

(taken from Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide by Merriam et al, 2007, p. 25).

The exercise asked learners to reflect on a quotation and address the following questions:

• Objective: What have you learned from reflecting on this particular quotation? What has caught your attention?
• Reflective: What did you realize about teaching as a result of this quotation?
• Interpretive: What was your 'Aha!' moment when you read this quotation? In what way(s) did this quotation change your mind about being an adult educator? What was one key insight that you now have as a result of this quotation?
• Decisional: How has this quotation and the insight that you have gained from reflecting upon it, influenced your notion of teaching or how you will teach in the future?   

Objective:  
The above quotation taken from Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide discusses the "erosion of boundaries in the context and provision of adult learning" (Merriam et al., 2007, p. 25), for me this calls to mind the area of occupational training and how responsive universities and formal education are to this need. In a further chapter, Merriam et al. (2007) discuss the concept of learning societies or lifelong learning and how previously the initial training learners received when they apprenticed for a trade or profession would not only prepare them but sustain them through their chosen career with little or no further training required. 
With advances in technology, globalization, and legal amendments, this is no longer the case and today many workers require continuous upgrading to keep abreast of job market standards.
 
An example of this is my car. I recently bought a hybrid and until I tried to make an appointment for its regular maintenance it had never occurred to me that not just any mechanic at the dealership had the training to work on it. Previously, your dad with little or no formal training could tinker with your car’s engine. Advances in technology in automobile industry, have now made cars so specialized that this is no longer the case. This trend extends without most aspects of society as technological advances make continual training and upgrading a necessity.
 
Far from being a new concept, the idea of learning societies appears to have originated from a UNESCO report, Learning to Be, written by Edgar Faure et al. in 1972 which introduced the theme of lifelong education in a more holistic and humanistic manner. Since the publication of this report, the idea of lifelong education has evolved and is now known by the term lifelong learning. In addition to the change in terminology, the idea of economic stability and growth has been added to the original concept. As seen in a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) entitled Lifelong Learning for All which states “[w]e are convinced of the crucial importance of learning throughout life for enriching personal lives, fostering economic growth and maintaining social cohesion” (as cited in Merriam et al, 2007, p. 47).
 
In addition, to fostering economic growth so that lifelong learning is a means of meeting the advancing needs of the job market and the economy, learners are also seeking enriched personal lives and social cohesion. The University of Phoenix commercials are a prime example of this. The commercial, “Let's Get to Work America” states that there are 3.7 million unfilled jobs in America and sells the “learning” that will make it

possible for a viewer/potential learner to move into one of these positions. At the same time, they recognize the desire of learners to access learning on their own terms that “enrich” their personal lives, as seen in the commercial, “Thinking Ahead” which proclaims the University of Phoenix as an “innovative learning environment” (University of Phoenix, 2007) where the learner approaches learning on their own terms. The

phrases in the commercial such as, “University of class is in session when I so choose” and “University of I don’t want to miss a thing” (University of Phoenix, 2007) along with the images of learners living life rather than stuck in a classroom capture this sense of enrichment and living on your own terms. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) offer a similar approach to learning where education is accessible anywhere by anyone addressing a variety of reasons that learners seek more education. These motives include upgrading training and credentials, availability of education and purely interest in the subject matter and a desire for lifelong learning.

Interpretive: 
I would say that in reflecting on this quotation, the "Aha!" moment for me came when I recalled an interview of George Siemens by Howard Rheingold. In this interview, Siemens talks about the need to move past simply teaching content to a place where instructors help create pathways of learning for students and teach students how to construct those pathways for themselves. I believe that this approach will enable students to be successful in learning even after they leave the classroom or the institution because as Siemens states you have helped create an active learner by shifting the power balance of knowledge from the instructor to the learner. You have taught them how to "wayfind" therefore they can go into any learning situation and create their own pathways to knowledge, which is clearly a necessary skill set in today's lifelong learning society (Rheingold, 2011).

Reflective: 
Returning to the quotation, the ideas discussed above make me realize that, as an instructor is to think about the diversity of my students. Not only in terms of their motivation for participating in the formal learning experience, which could range from upgrading their skill set to get to one that is attending purely out of interest sake but also in terms of prior learning and experience as well as personal life situations.

Decisional: 
I believe that the insight I have gained from this reflection will influence my future teaching by striving to aid learners in constructing their own pathways of learning. Moreover, while the course content is a necessary element to the course, I will strive to make the learning as relevant to the learner’s situation as possible. Working to foster a collaborative and empowering classroom environment, which will give learners a positive approach to lifelong learning and along the way learning as much from my students as they learn from me.
 
References:

• Educause Learning Initiatives. (2011). 7 things you should know about … MOOCs. [Electronic version] Educause Learning Initiatives, n.p.
• Merriam, S.B., Caffarella, R.S. & Baumgartner, L.M. (2007). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide. (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
• Rheingold, H. (2011, May 5). George Siemens on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) [Video file]. Video posted to http://youtu.be/VMfipxhT_Co.
• University of Phoenix. (2012, September 23). Let’s get to work American – University of
• Phoenix. [Video file]. Video posted to http://youtu.be/BclAhAU40ss.
• University of Phoenix. (2007, July 20). Thinking ahead commercial – University of Phoenix.
• [Video file]. Video posted to http://youtu.be/5mFMiTcFdNQ.

Emerging Trends and Roles of the Adult Educator Blog Assignment:

For the Trends and Roles Blog assignment, my learning partner, Celia Brinkerhoff and I decided to look at Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

While the two of us read numerous articles in order to situate ourselves on the topic of MOOCs, Celia chose to focus on the following two articles for Trends:

• Carson, S. (2009). The unwalled garden of the OpenCourseWare consortium, 2001-2008. [Electronic version] Open Learning, 24(1), 23-29.
• Mangan, K. (2012, May 10). MOOC mania. [Electronic version] Chronicle of Higher Education, 59(6), B4-B5.

And the following two articles for Roles:

• Kop, R., Fournier, H. & Mak, J.S.F. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance or a pedagogy to support human beings? Participant support on Massive Open Online Course. [Electronic version] International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12, 74-93.
• Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1). Retrieved from http://itdl.org/index.htm.

While researching the topic of MOOCs, I came across a YouTube video of Howard Rheingold interviewing George Siemens on MOOCs and I was captivated by George's passion and desire to transform the learning experience from that of a content driven, instructor focused mastering of the material to what Siemens himself refers to as a learner-focused "notion of wayfinding" (Rheingold, 2011) that combines social interaction and sense-making. So for the Roles section of the assignment I chose the following video:

• Rheingold, H. (2011, May 5). George Siemens on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) [Video file]. Video posted to http://youtu.be/VMfipxhT_Co.

For the Trends section of the assignment, I chose the following articles both of which examine data gathering by participants of the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course offered in 2008 by Stephen Downes and George Siemens:

• Mackness, J., Mak, S.F.J. & Williams, R. (2010). The ideals and reality of participating in a MOOC. [Electronic version] In L. Dirckinck-Homfeld, V. Hodgson, C. Jones, M. de Laat, D. McConnell & T. Ryberg (Eds),  Proceedings of the 7^th International Conference on Networked Learning 2010. 
• Fini, A. (2009). The technological dimension of a Massive Open Online Course: The case of the CCK08 course tools. [Electronic version] International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10, 1-26.

New Insights: 

A new insight for me is the idea of learner-driven education that Siemens discusses in his interview with Howard Rheingold. As I understand Siemens, the instructor acts in more of a moderator or facilitator role, guiding learners but allowing them to establish their own connection to the content and fellow learners. Assessment is often provided in a peer-to-peer model. Siemens argues that 

“[h]is intent based on [the] theories of learning is to argue that the experience of learning, making sense of that chaos is the heart of learning but if the instructor makes sense of that chaos for you and gives you all the readings and sets the full path in place for you that to a degree you are eviscerating the learner’s experience because now you’ve made sense for them and all you’ve told them is walk the path that I formed rather than here is how to find the path for yourself” (Rheingold, 2011).

This is something W. Gardner Campbell spoke about in his keynote address at the 2012 Open Education conference (see my post on the home page of this blog). How to facilitate creative thinking in students without structuring the creativity out of it. This is the type of instructor I strive to be. I would like to take the learning journey with my students with the ultimate result being that I learn something while they do - we learn from each other.

Trends:
The trend that we examined was the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This trend has been around for a while, since 2008, when Siemens and Downes held their Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK) course through the University of Manitoba. I think that this model offers a number of benefits particularly to lifelong learners, those looking to update their professional development skills, or for those to whom access to education is limited for a variety of reasons. However, as shown in the literature, MOOCs have a downside as well, the chaotic, creative element as well as the level of technicalogical knowledge needed can be overwhelming for some learners. As the trend towards open learning and open online courses increases, I believe that it is important to understand the implications of this for education and take an analytical approach to its potential benefits but to understand that it may not meet all needs of all learners.

Web-Conference:
The assignment calls for us to reflect on the web-conference experience and report on one thing we learned from the experience. My reflection may sound trite but I am continually impressed by the idea that technology can remove the barriers of distance from the learning experience. I completed much of the work of my Masters of Library and Information Science degree via distance and our group was spread between two provinces, two states, and three different time zones but our Monday night web-conference sessions removed a number of those barriers and we were able to successfully complete our degree through the support of each other. The one thing that I learned from the web-conference experience, outside of the research content that we shared, was the importance of having a friend in your class and the power of the shared learning experience.